How to Choose a Good Domain Name for Your Website

Choosing a domain name for the company website is as crucial as choosing the company name itself. The domain name represents the company in the virtual world, just like it does in the “real world”. Its importance can further be explained by incidences where companies have changed their domain names, just because people recognized it more than the company name itself. This makes clear that finding a suitable domain name for your enterprise is important. This article will provide useful tips that may help in assigning a proper domain name to your website.

Company Name and the Domain Name

It is always helpful to use the company’s name for your domain because a number of your customers and the target audience are already familiar with it and associate every product and service offered to that specific name. Also, it is possible that if one of your customers’ doesn’t know your domain name; he/she may use your company name, adding a ‘.com’ as the first possible guess. Hence, the perfect case scenario is using the enterprise name as your domain, if available.

What Should Be the Length of Your Domain Name?

One of the key questions asked while selecting best domain name is its character length. Always keep in mind that your domain name will be used by users to access your website. Thus, it is very likely that they will have to type it in, remember or reproduce it. This implies that the shorter the domain name the better. But, always remember your domain name should make sense and be in sync with your company profile.

Another issue is its availability. It is becoming more and more difficult to find shorter domain names for extensions like .com, .org and .net. The majority of the domain providers give you an option to use as many as 67 characters in your domain name. But, it is preferable to use a name having less than 20 characters.

Making Your Domain Name Unique

One thing you shouldn’t do while selecting a good domain name is using a title that is already in use by a popular entity. Many enterprises consider it being a recipe for disaster. Instead, find a name that best suits your business. If it’s already taken, you can either contact the one who owns that domain name and try to buy it or add some relevant characters to the best suited name.

For example, if you own a mobile phone business, and wish to select a domain name for your website such as ‘mobilephone.com’ or ‘cellphone.com’, chance are they’re already taken. So, what options do you have? Add relevant character to existing domains i.e. the location of your store or any other factor that differentiates you, e.g. ‘mobifone.com’.

Having Multiple Domain Names May Not Be a Dad Idea

It costs you approximately $12 per year to register and keep a domain name, and if we look at the bigger picture, it is a small price to pay to make sure you don’t lose a customer solely because he/she mistyped your domain name. One of the best examples is of America Online. When the company acquired Time Warner; it registered 21 domain names for the new firm. These names were selected keeping in view the possible typos that users can possibly make while typing the company’s web address.

Registering Product Names

Another process which is highly recommended when it comes to selecting the best domain names is registering names relating to the service or product your company is offering. In most cases, customers are familiar with the products rather than the parent company itself. Therefore, it is advised to register domains in names of the things offered. But when you register this kind of domain name, make sure that there is no trademark.

In this age of technology, having a strong web presence is very important for any business and a domain name provides it an identity in the virtual world. For this reason, a lot of thought and effort should be put in the selection process of your domain name. The basic guidelines mentioned here should be followed to selecting the best domain name.